Water Leasing Assignment Instructions

 

Due Date:

Friday, July 13th by 5:00 pm. A half point will be taken off for every day the assignment is late.

 

Maximum points:

This assignment is worth 20 points or 20% of your grade

 

Note: 

To complete this assignment you will need to go to www.uoregon.edu/~smital.  Watch the GIS tutorial and then go to the interactive GIS map of the Deschutes Basin.

 

Directions:

You are working to restore anadromous fish runs in the Deschutes Basin above the Pelton-Round Butte Dam complex. Fish will soon migrate above the dams for the first time in 50 years.  Your job is to expand habitat for returning fish by increasing in-stream summer water flows.  You have $100,000 to spend this year on water leases and/or purchases.

 

1.     Using the interactive map and website links provided, identify a stretch of the Deschutes or a tributary to the Deschutes whose anadromous fish bearing habitat can be improved by increasing in-stream flows during all or part of the year. To make this decision you’ll need to consider the following:

·      Where could anadromous fish go before the Pelton/Round-Butte dam complex blocked fish passage?

·      Once they pass the Pelton/Round-Butte dams, can fish get to your stretch of river or are there additional fish barriers preventing this.  (It doesn’t make sense to put water in-stream above a fish barrier.)

·      Is the stretch listed on the 303(d) list?  If so, will increased flow rates improve water quality and help remove the 303(d) listing?

·      Is there a critical shortage of water in this stretch of river during some part of the year that could affect fish survival?

·      Who owns the adjacent and nearby lands?

·      Are there existing legal protections for your stretch such as Wild and Scenic designations?

·      Is your stretch near or inside and irrigation district boundary? Some irrigation districts don’t allow water to be sold or leased.

 

REMEMBER! There are no wrong answers, only poorly-supported decisions.  Use the considerations listed above as well as any factual information learned over the course of this class to arrive at your final answer.  Take the time to explore the data that are available through the on-line interactive map service as well as data from additional web resources before making your final choice of waterright(s)!

 

2.     In three written pages:

·      Name the stretch of river in the Deschutes Basin you plan to focus on.  Explain your choice. You may include information on your stretch’s current water quality, likelihood that fish will return there in the near future, availability of water rights for lease or purchase, strategic value, past success by other organizations to purchase water in this stretch of river, cooperative nearby irrigation district, etc.

 

·      Identify which water right(s) (by certificate number) you want to lease/buy. At a minimum you must take into consideration the priority date, location of the withdrawal, season of use, flow rate, duty, and number of irrigated acres associated with the water right.  Buying or leasing junior water rights or rights whose season of use, flow rate, and duty are inconsistent with your stated needs will not receive a passing grade.

 

·      Show the hydrograph for the stream you plan to work on before your actions are implemented (Explore the USGS NWIS site and tutorial for this step!)  Create a second hydrograph that shows your best prediction of what the hydrograph will look like after your actions (you will have to create the prediction hydrograph using Excel or some other graphing program).

 

·      To determine how much water your action returns to the river, divide the number of acre-feet you lease/purchase by 1.98.  This will convert acre-feet of water into flow rate (in cfs) for a 24 hour period.  You must show your work and present this in an easy to follow manner.

 

Example:

 

Say you want to increase water in-stream in the Deschutes below Bend.  You buy water rights to 10 acres in the Swalley Irrigation District.  That means you purchased 40 acre-feet of water (because Swalley delivers 4 feet of water per acre of irrigated land). Forty acre-feet of water divided by 1.98 equals 20.2 cfs for one day. In other words 20.2 cfs of water flowing over a 24-hour period would produce 40 acre-feet of water.  

 

Now you need to divide 20.2 cfs by the number of days you want that water protected in-stream.  It could be the entire irrigation season (April 15 – Oct 15) in which case the additional flow rate in-stream is 0.112 CFS.  Or you might choose to protect the water in-stream during a critical period, say from June 15 – August 15.   In this case you would divide 20.2 cfs by 60 days.  Your actions would add 0.337 cfs to the river between June 15 – August 15.  Note: It’s important to know the seasonal hydrograph and the expected water availability for a given year in order to decide when you want to enforce your in-stream water right. 

 

The cost to buy this water permanently is $30,000.  (Ten acres at $1,000 per acre to buy and $2,000 per acre for the exit fee.) It only cost $280 to lease the same amount of water but you only get it for one year.

 

 

Use this information to determine the cost of leasing and/or purchasing water

 

Irrigation District

Leasing costs

Purchasing costs

Exit Fee (for purchases only)

Swalley ID

$7/acre-foot

$1000/acre

$2000/acre

Central Oregon ID

$7/acre-foot

$1500/acre

$1000/acre

Lone Pine ID

$7/acre-foot

$2750/acre

exit fee: $500/acre

land restoration fee - $500/acre-foot

Sisters ID

$7/acre-foot

Not allowed

$0

Walker Basin

$7/acre-foot

$3000/acre

$0

Whychus Creek (non-ID lands)

$7/acre-foot

$5000/acre

$0

 

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